Observations on language, literature, and other interesting phenomena

Menu

A slimikin offering for your reading pleasure

It’s another Friday, and that usually means vocabulary over in my neck of the intarwebs. And vocabulary I will give you, after a fashion. First, I will quaeritate you to be patient.

I am hightailing it out of town today and will be away for a fortnight (that’s two weeks, but doesn’t ‘fortnight’ just sound so neat?). I am coming up on my two-year blog anniversary, and so I have some embolimaeal re-postings of some of my earlier pieces that some of you may not have seen. I may have some limited internet access for the first week, so I’ll probably be able to check in once in a while. As most bloggers do, I love comments; I enjoy both the feedback and the sodalitious nature of the interchange. If you’ve been reading for even a short while, you know I like to answer all comments. Please do continue to leave those comments, as I sure do love ’em (wink wink, nudge nudge, say-no-more say-no more), but I may not be able to answer right away. I will certainly respond when I can.

I might be THIS excited to be on vacation.

As for internet access in the second week, it’s anybody’s guess. I might have more access than I can handle, or I may have the scaevity of having none at all. I just don’t know, and honestly, I’m not going to worry about it. Again, I’d love to hear your comments, but I might take the opportunity to just unplug for a few days and enjoy the immediate world around me a little more than I usually do when tempted by the easy lure of the virtual world.

Now onto that vocabulary I promised. I decided to hook you guys up with a bunch of very cool vocabulary websites that I hope you will enjoy and find useful as I am on my trajectitious journey.

I have to give credit to Wendy at Herding Cats in Hammond River for bringing my attention to the first website. This is the one that will solve the mystery of the title and the five oddball words that I included in italics in this post so far. The website is Save the Words, and it offers you the chance to adopt an endangered word so that it doesn’t pass out of the English language just yet. Most of the words seem quite archaic, though much to my dismay, I did come across the term ‘long play’…in other words, an LP: “vinyl phonograph records that play at 33-1/3 revolutions per.” Or, if you’re having some fun, you play them at 45 or 78 and get the Chipmunks! Yup, good old vinyl record references are becoming endangered already. Ouch.

So you don’t have to find them yourself, here are the six words I took from that site:

slimikin = small and slender

quaeritate = to ask

embolimaeal = inserted into the calendar

sodalitious = belonging to a society or fellowship

scaevity = unluckiness

trajectitious = characterized by overseas transport

On the opposite side of that coin comes Word Spy, a dictionary devoted to new words that are entering the language. My favorite word on my first pass through was ‘adorkable‘, or ‘delightful and charming in a socially awkward way.’ I really think I need to start using that one around the office.

The third website is the Online Etymology Dictionary, which I have certainly referenced before, but I’ve discovered something new about it. Perhaps many of you already know this, but recently, I finally noticed the banner at the bottom of the page where it says “Who did this?”. The man responsible for this dictionary is indeed a fascinating man and his bio is definitely worth a go-look-see. Also quite useful is checking out some of the links he has compiled for further study into words.

This was taken from a Japanese notebook I bought in Istanbul. I've been hanging it over every desk I've had for 10 years. The "L" was a gift from an Argentinian student from one of my very first classes, maybe 16-17 years ago.

One of those websites under “Diversions” is Engrish.com, a site devoted to the unique peculiarities of Japanese English. They are famous for the strange but poetic phrasing of their translations into English. It certainly reminds me of my ESL days, when we teachers would playfully adopt some of these errors and use them with other teachers. Now, before you go yelling at us for being big meanies, making fun of the Japanese students, you need to understand the protective, maternal/paternal feelings we ESL teachers generally have for our students. Sure, we teased them, but we found their errors charming; they made us feel even more sympathetic towards the students, and we worked hard to help them improve. We told them the errors we made ourselves when trying to speak in different languages. They learned to laugh at their mistakes and not be so pressured to be perfect at all times.

On that note, I’m afraid that I will have take my leave. I am currently in a state of unusually anxiety-ridden packing, and every time I turn around, it seems there is something else that I’ve missed. When I get like this, I’m rather like a squirrel on uppers, so if I hope to complete the onerous task of deciding which jeans to bring with me, I must now bid you all a fond à la prochaine. I hope you enjoy the offerings!

Adorkable is a fantastic new word that I should like to adopt as well! The words you chose to rescue from an ignominious demise are certainly a mouthful. Might get some funny looks if I tried to work those into daily conversation.

Bon voyage! May you enjoy dusting off your French and return refreshed, with many great stories to share with us, your loyal readers.

Lovely! Thanks for the links! I knew engrish.com, but not the rest of them. Well except the Save the Words one (that I have lined up for a post of my own in the near future XD). And new words I didn’t even know. How wonderful. :D